Looter & Mugger are too powerful!

[Bullfrog12]

Why? One word: Thievery. The loss of gold is VERY crippling! The Looter costs me the most HP of ANY enemy in Act 1, AND some decks aren't even GUARANTEED to save their gold!! The Looter + Mugger encounter is even WORSE, because, unless you have MASSIVE damage output, you WILL lose your gold!!! Here are 3 ways I'd nerf them:

• Remove these encounters entirely.
  
• If they escape, you can run after them.
  
• Drop their HP by 50%.

[Bullfrog12]

WOW did this thread explode with comments...

[Dr. Marker]

Gankatron a écrit :

@Marker:

That's Dr. Marker, thank you very much.

Although you have made it a point to argue with multiple posters, unlike many on this thread, you bring little of value to these conversations, which is why you focus on semantic arguments, utilize hyperbole, and rely on masturbation and oral sex references, the latter which you believe enhances your credibility as a thoughtful speaker?

Just because you can claim that someone has no value to bring to a conversation doesn't mean that they don't, you've spent so many of these past responses trying to simply dismiss me out of hand rather than actually refuting what I'm saying that this criticism can very easily be thrown right back at you, I've been folliwing the standard structure in writing of Point. Evidence. Conclusion. where you've fallen back on what essentially boils down to a series of ad hominums and an obsession with calling everything semantics (which is sort of a given seeing as the subject we're talking about is a highly subjective one with little in the way of objective truths to it).

Also, I don't rely on sexual references and never claimed that those elements made me a more thoughtful or insightful speaker (writer?), I merely like to include humour in my writing because I comment on here for fun as well as for discussion and a bit of light banter is perfectly acceptable (maybe that's my laddish side coming out).

You are a prime example of the style-over-substance internet magpie.

I guess it takes one to know one, eh?

Again, just because you can disparage me and call me labels doesn't invalidate the things I say.

I find your argumentative demeanor banal, and I have no interest in engaging you in the future.

And I find you pompus and self-indulgent but I put that aside while addressing your arguements and only let it rise to the surface for the sake of humour.

By all means, if you wish to not address me, you are (and have always been) free to simply ignore me. Just because I respond to you doesn't mean you need to get the last word in, however, if I still disagree with comments of yours I see on here then I will respond and address them, irrespective of whether you feel me worthy of your time or not.

You want to polemize, I don't, so I won’t, but a bit of advice, peppering your comments with sexual references is a waste of virtual ink, and only detracts from any legitimate points you wish you impress upon us.

It's very impressive that in an essay somewhere in the space of about 1000 words you seem to get hung up over the inclusion of precisely two instances of sexual terminology used for comedic effect (the latter one even having the purpose of highlighting the pedantry of your own claim that I was somehow seeking a philisophical debate), the only thing I can really say about this is that on a personal level it makes you seem remarkably immature and easily flustered if you can so easily be distracted from the main meat of an arguement due to a couple of jokes about....er...well, distractions surrounding one's 'meat'.

You are exactly like that CNN presenter who heard the word 'boobs' and had to bring the entire interview to a halt to express her offense over it.

Assuming I have been using a thesaurus for this conversation only illustrates a deficiency in your own working vocabulary. Nonetheless, consulting a thesaurus is commendable and might serve you well to enhance your mental lexicon past phallic references.

You think big words make you sound smart, don't you?

I used to think like that when I was younger until it finally dawned upon me that just because I can use very advanced terminology doesn't always mean I should, as a general rule simplicity tends to be favoured over complexity for very good reason.

If it takes you a paragraph to explain what I can detail in two words then it means you have a serious problem with getting to the point and that you probably engage in a lot of needless rambling, language works very much the same way, you could tell someone 'there will be a veritable deluge of precipitation today' but odds are on you could convey things much more clearly and concisely with 'it's going to rain a lot today'.

Complex vocabulary or no, you'll take my ♥♥♥♥ jokes when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.

[Morphic]

Dr. Marker a écrit :

To coin a quote from an interview given by the creator of Demon's Souls when talking about that game's infamous difficulty he noted that difficulty in and of itself was never the point, it was merely a device used to get the player invested in their character and immersed in the world of the game, it's also worth noting that as the series has gone on and the creative and unexpected challenges of the first game have been replaced with the greater difficulties of the later entries that something of worth and quality has definitely been lost in exchange (the final boss of Dark Souls 3 is certainly a mechanically superior fight to the final boss of Dark Souls but it definitely lost the impact and significance of the original, something that made it all feel rather anti-climatic and disappointing).

Since, IMO, you are effectively arguing semantics moreso than an actual topic/issue ... I'd like to address this bit because I feel it is subjective. Specifically the bolded text and the following thought.

Majority of Souls players actually argue against that for a few reasons. Notably Dark Souls 2 was simultaneously the easiest and hardest Souls game to get into for newcomers. The actual challenges and mechanics were easier to understand and most of the first few zones were quite forgiving for newcomers. So in that aspect it was an "easy" game and why lots of returning players tend to hate on Dark Souls 2 or found it boring, they weren't actually "challenged" until halfway through the game.(Like Life Gems and Estus, enemies permanently despawning after X kills etc.)

The reason why it was also the "hardest" to get into was due to how little direction the Player gets and how many areas are open and accessible without actually having to do things. Explorative Players often found themselves in zones that were significantly harder and intended to be optional or "for later" without ever realizing it.(looking at you sentry and fake ornstein zone!) Whereas with Dark Souls 1 you often had to kill a Boss in order to proceed to the next area. If you couldn't kill it you were "locked" into current zone and needed to grind or just improve.

In this instance StS and Demon's Souls have a lot in common in terms of design. Both games feature a "starting area" that has it's own challenges but eases the Player into the game/area. However both quickly ramp up in the next zone. Similar to how Demon's Zone areas start often simple and easy enough but drastically spike for the new challenges(1-1 to 1-2 to 1-3) and StS Acts. (Act 1 is super forgiving but the Boss is quite difficult. Then Act 2 is barely forgiving and Bosses start to hard counter Decks.)

Also Dark Souls 3's Final Boss was pretty much the only actually good designed Boss and, consequently, the only "fun" Boss. All the others were either BS attack spammers or simply "Lol!" easy for most builds.

TLDR: Since, admittedly it's longwinded for a singular point... Slay the Spire's difficulty design is much the same as Demon's Souls. The intial area/Act is quite simple and forgiving, which eases the Player into the game. However subsequent areas drastically spike the difficulty to accomodate new challenges etc. (for reference look at Demon's 1-1 to 1-2 to 1-3. Its jump is very similar to StS's Act 1 to 2 to 3.)

Also there was only 1 good boss fight in Dark Souls 3 and it was the Final Boss lol. All the others were anti-climatic and "boring".

EDIT: Forgot to add some stuff lol.

PS: Gankatron comes off as totally condenscending and wanting to stroke his/her inflated ego. You can be verbose and faux eloquent... but it just comes off as pompous or pretentious. Though that's my opinion and I figured it was appropiate for a 3rd party to weigh in.

[Gankatron]

"coin a quote"

[Ghostlight]

Sinsling a écrit :

Personally, I think Rett is wasting his time. We've already refuted that this encounter is any worse than other enemy sets of the same act.

No one has refuted anything.

And yes he is wasting his time. As I said ages ago, no one with the win rate he claims is having a typical experience against these mobs. The less typical your experience with them, the less qualified you are to judge whether they are genuinely OP for a typical player.

[Tray]

Ghostlight a écrit :

Rett a écrit :

So what other enemies can you encounter in the same room as two thieves?

Shell Parasite
Chosen
Byrds x3
Sphere Guardian

Shell Parasite and 3x Byrds are on the easy side, usually. Unless the Parasite keeps slamming you with Frail, or you fail to draw a way to deal at least 3 attack damages to the byrds, you can pretty much perfect the encounters easily even with a bad deck.

Chosen varies. Some decks won't have too much trouble, but he can be just as deadly if not more than the thieves to certain decks. Depends on how RNG he's feeling, and whether he wants to keep smacking you for 30 5 turns in a row, or just screw around weakening you.

Sphere Guardian can be just as deadly. It gives you a warm up turn and a half, but after that you're frail and taking 10/20 hits, which is arguably worse than taking 20 for two turns in a row.

The huge difference is that none of those enemies steal gold. Gold loss is MUCH worse than damage. Healing damage is pretty easy; bonfires are everywhere. Gold recovery is impossible. With an average Silent deck I can probably kill all the enemies you listed with little to no damage received outside of really unfortunate RNG. With the Looter pair I have to chose between taking 0 damage and losing 45 to 90 Gold, or taking 20, possibly 30 damage and keeping all my gold. 30 damage is crippling early on floor 2.

That is what makes these particular enemies out of whack when compared to their peers. Also, since you typically encounter them early in floor 2, you are almost always carrying at least 100+ Gold from the boss you just killed.

C'mon brah...

Gold loss is much worse then damage? Really?

Bonfires are everywhere? Everytime you use one to heal you don't get an upgrade.

You clearly state you run defencive decks, and there is a single mob in the game that partially screws with your preferred playstyle and it is somehow broken?

Building more offensive solves the problem. "But then I take damage" Pretty sure you just said healing damage is pretty easy no?

"I have to chose between taking 0 damage and losing 45 to 90 Gold, or taking 20, possibly 30 damage and keeping all my gold."

That's literally the POINT of that encounter. Why are you upset that there is at least some variety to encounters besides kill or be killed?

Compaired to some of the other fights at this level I breath a sigh of relief when I see them.

[Morphic]

Tray a écrit :

Ghostlight a écrit :

The huge difference is that none of those enemies steal gold. Gold loss is MUCH worse than damage. Healing damage is pretty easy; bonfires are everywhere. Gold recovery is impossible. With an average Silent deck I can probably kill all the enemies you listed with little to no damage received outside of really unfortunate RNG. With the Looter pair I have to chose between taking 0 damage and losing 45 to 90 Gold, or taking 20, possibly 30 damage and keeping all my gold. 30 damage is crippling early on floor 2.

That is what makes these particular enemies out of whack when compared to their peers. Also, since you typically encounter them early in floor 2, you are almost always carrying at least 100+ Gold from the boss you just killed.

That's literally the POINT of that encounter. Why are you upset that there is at least some variety to encounters besides kill or be killed?

Likely because it screws with his preferred playstyle. Thus he can't play "however he wants" without being "punished" for it.

I can understand that but perhaps I'm biased since I disagree with that kind of assessment. I see this all the time in the other Roguelikes I frequent, people complain how X is OP .... because that Anti-Magic Knight just pwned you for being a Wizard. That's kinda the point of the encounter, it forces you to adapt and possibly play in a different way for that specific enemy. Then you can go back to curbstomping fools with your magic powers.

[Ghostlight]

Tray a écrit :

Gold loss is much worse then damage? Really?

I absolutely stand by that.

Bonfires are everywhere? Everytime you use one to heal you don't get an upgrade.

Very few cards are "must upgrade". Most are just fine regardless of whether you upgrade. Missing out an upgrade is not a big deal (compared to missing out a card removal which *IS* a big deal). In short, I do not usually go for bonfires unless I need a heal or unless the alternative is a basic encounter. I'd go for ? spaces more.

You clearly state you run defencive decks, and there is a single mob in the game that partially screws with your preferred playstyle and it is somehow broken?

In comparison to its peer mobs.

Building more offensive solves the problem. "But then I take damage" Pretty sure you just said healing damage is pretty easy no?

30 damage in first encounter in Act 2 is a problem for the Silent. Not for mister OP Ironclad.

That's literally the POINT of that encounter. Why are you upset that there is at least some variety to encounters besides kill or be killed?

I get the point of the encounter I am fine with its concept. It is WHERE it occurs (almost always first encounter in Act 2) and HOW it compares with its peers I am miffed about, not the encounter itself per se.

And I am only *slightly* miffed. Just enough to agree with the OP. There are other balance issues much more pressing than this one.

[Tray]

The game ends when your hp hits 0, not when you run low on gold. So no, I'd say hp is more important.

If you view card upgrades as optional, you are definatley not playing on a higher difficulty, and if you are not playing on a higher difficulty gold also doesn't matter much. (Not a skill stab, just a comparison)

In comparison to its peer mobs? Have you seen how much hate the chosen gets?

30 damage shouldn't matter when you have already stated you generally don't take damage from other fights in the act and you also don't mind skipping card upgrades for healing right?

Act 1 you should be elite hunting, and 2/3 elite encounters punish defencive decks, so you should have the offence needed + some relics to make the thief fight pretty meh.

[Gankatron]

I am not sure I can definitively state losing gold is worse than health because my choice would be conditional to my current deck, character, and situation, but for what it is worth I pretty much will always rather choose to lose health than to be penalized or miss out on a reward.

Of course, I probably would especially lean toward losing health if I knew I would be regenerating 6 health every successful combat.

All I can say is that if I see a shop anywhere occurring anywhere in my near future I will be incentivized to lose heath over gold.

Although I would be happier if one of the thieves had an extra turn added prior to fleeing, I still regard the encounter as appropriate within the context of a challenging RL game.

[Dr. Marker]

Setzway a écrit :

Majority of Souls players actually argue against that for a few reasons. Notably Dark Souls 2 was simultaneously the easiest and hardest Souls game to get into for newcomers.

For someone who accuses me of semantics this is an awfully vague statement if ever I heard one.

Please continue.

The actual challenges and mechanics were easier to understand and most of the first
few zones were quite forgiving for newcomers.

Very debatable considering that Dark Souls 2 saw a lot of mechanics from the previous game become a lot more complex and convoluted with things such as all of the modifiers that the Agility and Adaptability stats added which weren't very clearly explained, the staggered loss of health from hollowing (which also lead to invasions being harder to predict), the changing of covenants from a simple passive effect to also requiring a ring, the Soul Memory mechanic along with many others.

In terms of mechanical complexity, Dark Souls 2 is harder to get to grips with than any of the other Souls games.

I'd also hesitate in calling the challenges of that game easy, they were easily cheesable (to the point where a lot of the changes made to bows in DS3 felt like a direct answer to that) but that's not the same thing as being easy in and of themselves.

So in that aspect it was an "easy" game and why lots of returning players tend to hate on Dark Souls 2 or found it boring, they weren't actually "challenged" until halfway through the game.

Also questionable, a lot of people also criticised DS2 for it's comparitively lazy design with a lot of areas relying on 'spambushs' (ambushes that spam you with enemies), unimaginative boss design (the 'dudes in armour' claim) as well as the introduction of healing gems breaking the balance of the healing system along with a lot of bosses being made harder by simply throwing more enemies into the mix.

The reason why it was also the "hardest" to get into was due to how little direction the Player gets and how many areas are open and accessible without actually having to do things. Explorative Players often found themselves in zones that were significantly harder and intended to be optional or "for later" without ever realizing it.(looking at you sentry and fake ornstein zone!) Whereas with Dark Souls 1 you often had to kill a Boss in order to proceed to the next area. If you couldn't kill it you were "locked" into current zone and needed to grind or just improve.

I have to question how familiar you are with DS1 in that case since it was very easy for players to sumble into locations like the Catacombs, New Londo Ruins and (if they had the master key) the Valley of the Drakes upon first exiting the tutorial, many of those places being intended for higher level players with better equipment (especially New Londo) and DeS doesn't prevent you from tackling the levels in any order either, a brand new player could make the mistake of choosing the Valley of Defilement first.

Argueably, the only game that actually 'locked' you into a semi-linear path would be Dark Souls 3, with the game only branching off into multiple paths (one of which has a literal wall at the end of it to keep you from progressing until you complete the other one first) once you reach the swamp (a good hour or two into the game depending on player skill).

In this instance StS and Demon's Souls have a lot in common in terms of design. Both games feature a "starting area" that has it's own challenges but eases the Player into the game. However both quickly ramp up in the next zone. Similar to how Demon's Zone areas start often simple and easy enough but drastically spike for the new challenges(1-1 to 1-2 to 1-3) and StS Acts. (Act 1 is super forgiving but the Boss is quite difficult. Then Act 2 is barely forgiving and Bosses start to hard counter Decks.)

I would agree that the two games do share a lot of similarities in their design however I don't agree that there was this sharp ramping of difficulty in the Souls titles and that has been my main criticism of StS (again, something I merely said the Looter and Mugger presented an example of).

Act 3, in my opininon, is significantly easier than Act 2 simply because you're dealing with similar challenges but approaching it at a higher 'level' (for lack of a better term) and with more and better quality tools at your disposal, which is why if I were to offer actionable suggestions it would be to tweak the encounters in Act 2 to be a bit more lax as the expense of ramping up the difficulty of Act 3 (again, to form a more smooth difficulty curve that presents a more even and consistent challenge).

Also Dark Souls 3's Final Boss was pretty much the only actually good designed Boss and, consequently, the only "fun" Boss. All the others were either BS attack spammers or simply "Lol!" easy for most builds.

I dunno about that, I was always pretty fond of the Deacons of the Deep myself.

Not an especially hard fight but actually felt unique and different from all of the others (not relying on rolling spam for starters).

[Dr. Marker]

Setzway a écrit :

PS: Gankatron comes off as totally condenscending and wanting to stroke his/her inflated ego. You can be verbose and faux eloquent... but it just comes off as pompous or pretentious. Though that's my opinion and I figured it was appropiate for a 3rd party to weigh in.

Fair enough, I can take that criticism, I can't exactly change how people percieve me.

As I said before, more of my issue with Gankatron was with how he presented and defended his positions rather than the actual content of them, at the end of the day we're talking about what we do and don't like in a video game, everything to an extent is going to be subjective and opinion based.

[Morphic]

Gankatron a écrit :

I am not sure I can definitively state losing gold is worse than health because my choice would be conditional to my current deck, character, and situation, but for what it is worth I pretty much will always rather choose to lose health than to be penalized or miss out on a reward.

Of course, I probably would especially lean toward losing health if I knew I would be regenerating 6 health every successful combat.

All I can say is that if I see a shop anywhere occurring anywhere in my near future I will be incentivized to lose heath over gold.

Although I would be happier if one of the thieves had an extra turn added prior to fleeing, I still regard the encounter as appropriate within the context of a challenging RL game.

I pretty much agree as I tend to have the same mindset. If I'm Ironclad, I'll gladly lose HP to gain more Gold since I have the passive Regen to mitigate the HP loss.

Silent is, IMO, completely situational according to Deck but 9/10 times you want to prioritize your HP rather than your Gold. Thus the Thieves affect Silent much greater than Ironclad.

Overall, while getting "rewards" does indeed help; as well as Card Removal... I don't think it's as impactful as some people are making it out to be. Granted I'm on Ascension 8 with both Characters... but I never felt like I was screwed over because I couldn't remove 1 Card or something. Instead I either tried building my Deck differently and doing other forms of mitigation.

Dr. Marker a écrit :

For someone who accuses me of semantics this is an awfully vague statement if ever I heard one.
[SNIP]
Please continue.

You are completely missing my point to further argue over semantics. Notice how in my TLDR I allude to how I didn't want to get longwinded over making a singular point. Honestly I could've created page after page of explanations to further illustrate my point I was making but I tried to be brief... which is why I further included my TLDR to condense my point in as short as I could. Since the things in question were subjective I felt it was neccessary to add in a "counter" view and opinion on it since one wasn't really present and you were using your opinion as a counterpoint/example.

Seems to me you are riled up and now defensive due to Gankatron.

Dr. Marker a écrit :

Setzway a écrit :

PS: Gankatron comes off as totally condenscending and wanting to stroke his/her inflated ego. You can be verbose and faux eloquent... but it just comes off as pompous or pretentious. Though that's my opinion and I figured it was appropiate for a 3rd party to weigh in.

Fair enough, I can take that criticism, I can't exactly change how people percieve me.

Admittedly I screwed up and misworded that. By "You" I actually meant in general, not you specifically. So, my bad lol. I actually wasn't criticising you for your candor since I felt it was appropiate reponse to Gankatron.

Though with your reply to me I'm starting to rethink that... I mean you could have just stated you disagree with my assessment because "DS 1 with master key allowed players to access content that was intended for later etc." and left it at those examples.(Which I'd further argue but that's really beside the point and why I tried to be brief.)

EDIT: I keep forgetting to add in some stuff. Really should stop typing while watching Netflix lol.

[Gankatron]

Setzway a écrit :

Silent is, IMO, completely situational according to Deck but 9/10 times you want to prioritize your HP rather than your Gold. Thus the Thieves affect Silent much greater than Ironclad.

I certainly do skip more Rest upgrades and Mystery Room opportunities to protect my health as the Silent compared to the Ironclad.

Now one might want to consider if there are encounters that instead favor the Silent occurring with a similar frequency as those favoring the Ironclad, assuming one is particulary concerned with balancing the two current characters (which I am not since this isn't a PvP game, and even the leader boards are split by class), granted the potential loss of gold makes this encounter unique.

Still I wonder if the Ironclad is better suited than the Silent for the Thief encounters, as choosing to put up block won't help to rapidly burn them down, unless you are running Body Slam.

[Morphic]

Gankatron a écrit :

Still I wonder if the Ironclad is better suited than the Silent for the Thief encounters, as choosing to put up block won't help to rapidly burn them down, unless you are running Body Slam.

Honestly, I'm rather conflicted over this bit as well.

Overall I tend to look more on the Common and Uncommon Card pools. Ironclad typically has things like Iron Wave which act as an Attack and give Block. So not only are you whittling the Thieves down but you are also mitigating their incoming damage.

Versus Silent which typically only has Cloak and Dagger... which does less overall damage(and block?) unless you have Accuracy.

This leads me feeling that Silent has the shaft for this fight in particular because she is so Offense or Attrition related. There's barely any "hybrid" type Cards for her that enable her to defend and attack. Granted she has Sucker Punch and Neutralize, which deal damage and Weaken... but, IMO, Weaken is only really effective when you have 20+ damage coming your way.

IMO, I feel that the Thieves shouldn't be able to Steal your gold if you fully Block their damage. Yeah, this allows people to Turtle for no consequence. However those Turtle people won't get any Reward at all. Whereas someone who actually attacks and kills them will get their stolen gold back and be rewarded for their effort with a Card choice and whatever else.